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Initiation-Part 2

by B.

I’ve become a pack rat… I have stuff in so many secret files that I can’t remember why I have secret files… .

In one of them, one day… one day when I should have been doing something more substantial than rummaging through old papers, I found my Grandmother’s Social Security Card.

I had teased her that she would now have to go to work… she had twisted her mouth in ashmoor… "Demmo innEw? IdmayEn mulu yeserahoot saibeqaN?"

Her card was neatly placed between two plastic sheets, testimony to her fastidious orderliness. She was a number in the great American bureaucracy. She had gone out of her way to exude nonchalance about getting her SSN, but the little card - crisp and sheltered in a recycled Ziplock - betrays her.

~~~

The morning after we heard of her death, I woke up to the quiet sobbing of my mother… "GetayEiyEsusEhlm argew… ." For one moment, I sighed in relief that I had dreamt the phone call, and the immediate numbness that followed, and the scorching pain that de-anesthetized the agony of the phone call.

GetayE hlm argewle-inEm hlm argew… .

But when I reached over to my mother’s side of the bed and my hand sank in a pool of wetness on her pillow, I sought that ephemeral moment of numbness…a few more minutes to reassess and calibrate my sorrow.

I had had the distinct displeasure of telling my mother that her mother had passed. Merdo is hard to practice…it doesn’t roll off of one’s tongue as easily as it technically should. I went to where my mother was staying…she was out but due back any minute. I hid in my car and waited for her where I could see her, feeling like the unkindest of thieves. I spent the time practicing the words of the merdo, and wondering if I was wearing the right bra for the occasion.

I finally saw her walking towards her door…her one hand clutching her dainty bag…her other holding the top button of her cardigan.

Surprised and happy to see me, she swung the door open… and in slo-mo she realized it was the middle of the morning…that I was wearing black…that my eyes were puffy… that I was not saying anything… I realized simply that I was a terrible merdo teller… .

~~~~

 

Memories of my grandmother seep into the unreality I created for myself and at the oddest and most inconvenient times. I think about her while intentionally trying to avoid thinking about her… . And like a vengeful masochist, I keep remembering the universe’s cruelty in deigning me the bearer of merdo to her one daughter who is the most fragile. For distraction from the pain, I pick at the wound.

I wanted to believe she was watching over me… that there is continuum even post mortem. But there is this bile of timed bitterness deep in one corner of my soul, and occasionally it releases itself in the form of acid droplets…slowww droplets that burn perfect little circles through my unhealing heart.

I wanted to believe that her spirit was still with me, and that occasionally she was looking down at me, guiding me the way she used to…that death had stopped the pain medicine had caused her. I wanted to believe that at times she was actually listening to me. But the bile was getting bolder…and more concentrated… .

And then I found her Social Security Card. As always, my grandmother’s timing was impeccable. I was about to sink in that unforgiving wave of sorrow that is regret. Regret for not going back home to take care of her… regret for not holding her hand one last time… regret for once again asking her to forgive me. Regret is the last stretch of sorrow, a desert where so many have perished. And there I was, galloping towards no-man’s land… .

I don’t even know how I have her card, but it materialized, and brought with it the woman whose spirit was watching over me.

And when I go back home next, I will be initiated into that society of Ethiopians who have to make a pit stop at a grave.

 

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